1803–1890
Westward Expansion & the Frontier
In the 1800s settlers, miners, railroads and cowboys moved across North America to the Pacific. The Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon Trail, the Gold Rush and the Transcontinental Railroad opened the West, while Indigenous nations lost their lands, often by force. In Canada, a railroad stitched the country together after Confederation in 1867.
Why artists painted it
Artists like Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Remington created the American West as a place of mountains, wagon trains, cowboys and epic skies, a picture that still shapes how we imagine it.
American Progress · John Gast, 1872
American Progress
John Gast · 1872
👁️ Painted at the time
In Gast's famous picture, a gigantic glowing figure floats over the West carrying schoolbooks and a telegraph wire, with railroads and wagons following.
Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
Emanuel Leutze · 1862
👁️ Painted at the time
Leutze's mural for the US Capitol shows pioneers reaching the crest of the Rockies and seeing the Pacific.
Fathers of Confederation
Robert Harris · 1884
👁️ Painted at the time
The leaders who created Canada in 1867 meet in Quebec. The painting hung in Parliament until it was destroyed by fire in 1916.
Fort Laramie
Alfred Jacob Miller · 1858
👁️ Painted at the time
Tipis stand by a trading fort in Wyoming, where trappers and Native American traders met and where the Oregon Trail passed.
Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap
George Caleb Bingham · 1852
👁️ Painted at the time
The frontiersman Daniel Boone leads a group of pioneers through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, with a woman riding a white horse.
Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole
Charles Marion Russell · 1912
👁️ Painted at the time
The explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who crossed the continent in 1804 to 1806, meet the Salish people at Ross' Hole in what is now Montana.
The Driving of the Last Spike
Thomas Hill · 1881
👁️ Painted at the time
On May 10, 1869, the last spike joined the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory, Utah, creating the first railroad across America.
The Oregon Trail
Albert Bierstadt · 1869
👁️ Painted at the time
Wagons wind through a glowing landscape under a red sky on the Oregon Trail, the long route that tens of thousands of settlers took west.
Boone's First View of Kentucky
William Ranney · 1849
👁️ Painted at the time
Daniel Boone and his friends look out over the green land of Kentucky for the first time in 1769, in a painting that made the frontier look wide open.
Buccaroos
Charles Marion Russell · 1902
👁️ Painted at the time
Cowboys, also called buckaroos, ride in the open West in this lively painting by Charles M.
Herd Quit
Charles Marion Russell · 1897
👁️ Painted at the time
Two cowboys race on horses to catch a runaway steer, in a scene full of speed and dust.
Chinese Railroad Workers in the Sierra Nevada
Illustrator B&H · 1870
👁️ Painted at the time
Thousands of Chinese workers built the Central Pacific Railroad through the Sierra Nevada, digging tunnels and clearing rock by hand, in very dangerous conditions.
Custer's Last Stand
Edgar Samuel Paxson · 1899
👁️ Painted at the time
In June 1876 the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors defeated General Custer's soldiers at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, one of the greatest victories for Native Americans in the Plains Wars.